With This Kiss (2 page)

She knew she should have been shocked by Stu’s kiss with John. Only, she wasn’t. Not when all of the warning signs, everything that hadn’t added up from the first time Stu had asked her out, suddenly made perfect sense.

After a lifetime of dating tall, dark, and mysterious men who made her heart race, men with a core of danger and secrets that she’d longed to heal and love, Stu had been safe. Gentle. A calm lake instead of a roaring sea. Their first date had been full of laughter, and even though the very few kisses that came in later months were nothing to write home about, she told herself fireworks were overrated. Lord knew she could live without the careening emotions that usually went hand in hand with her relationships.

Standing there in Stu’s living room with John waiting
awkwardly by the window, she’d realized why their engagement had always felt so wrong to her: they’d both been desperately lying to themselves, both been wanting to believe in something that could never make either of them happy in the long run.

“
Why didn’t you tell me?
” was what she’d finally asked him and when he’d said, “
I wanted so badly to make it work
,” in clear anguish, she’d tried to say, “
Everything’s going to be okay.
”

She’d thought her relationship with Stu was different from her previous relationships. She’d thought it was healthy. But she’d been wrong. Which was why she hadn’t been able to force those false words out.

Stu was a blur of emotion.
“I thought I could marry you, but seeing John brought up so many old feelings. Feelings I thought had gone away. Feelings I’d convinced myself had never existed in the first place. I’m just so confused about everything. You must hate me. But I swear I didn’t cheat on you. Just that kiss.”
His tears, along with his confession, broke her heart.
“I’m sorry, Rebecca. So, so sorry.”

It had been hard to get him to listen to her, to understand that she’d come to talk to him to call off their engagement, too, that she was an equal partner in breaking things off. Ultimately, she’d accepted that nothing she could say was going to calm him down. Not that night, anyway.

“Please keep my secret, Rebecca.”
He gripped her hands so tightly that she’d found small bruises along the tops of them the next morning.
“I need to figure things out first. Please.”

She couldn’t help but wonder how Stu could possibly ask her to keep a secret like that? Especially when he
knew how big her honesty gene was, that she was terrible at holding anything back.

“
You know I’m no good at keeping secrets
,” she’d told him, but it was the fear, the pain, the confusion in Stu’s eyes that had her finally promising to keep his secret despite her deep reservations… and the sure knowledge that keeping Stu’s secret was only going to hurt everyone more in the long run.

Of course, she’d assumed he’d be there in the morning, had believed that once he’d calmed down they’d figure out a way to share the news that they’d decided to just remain friends.

Rebecca found his note in the morning.

Mere minutes later, his mother, Elizabeth, burst into the inn’s reception room gripping a similar letter in her hand. Tears were still fresh on her cheeks… and she hadn’t bothered to hide the accusations in her eyes when she looked at Rebecca.

The church bells chiming loudly outside the inn’s window brought Rebecca back into the present moment. Andi’s look of concern had morphed into full-on worry.

How long has she been lost replaying her final night with Stu?

“Have you heard from him yet?” Andi asked.

“No. He hasn’t been in touch with any of us. Not even his parents.”

Rebecca turned her gaze out the window, as if she could somehow spot Stu out there on Main Street if she looked hard enough. But she sensed he wouldn’t be back so soon. Even though she not only needed his help with the inn, but the Tapping of the Maples Festival was rapidly approaching and she was nearly running on empty trying to take care of everything by herself.

She understood that he was dealing with a lot right now, but every now and again she felt more than a little miffed that he’d left her here to deal with both the inn and the festival entirely on her own for who knew how long.

Andi gripped her hand tighter and Rebecca felt moisture tickling her eyes again.

No. This was Andi’s wedding day. Rebecca hadn’t cried once in the past three weeks, and she certainly wasn’t going to cry for herself now as they put the final touches on Andi’s dress and hair and makeup.

Firmly deciding that the only tears she’d cry today would be happy ones, she smiled widely and said, “I can’t wait to see Nate’s face when you walk down the aisle. He’s going to be the happiest man alive.”

After only the slightest moment of hesitation, Andi, thankfully, let Rebecca have her way in changing the subject.

“The church bells have chimed.” Rebecca opened the door and held her hand out for Andi. “It’s time.”

Oh my. What a lovely wedding it was.

Of course, the bride was gorgeous and the groom was handsome. Pink and white and red hothouse roses were in bloom all over the room. But Rebecca knew Andi and Nate could have been standing in the middle of an open
field wearing jeans and T-shirts and it still would have been one of the most beautiful ceremonies she’d ever witnessed.

The love between them was so strong it reached out to wrap itself around everyone in the room. At last, Rebecca didn’t bother to hide her tears, not when pretty much everyone else in the room was dabbing at their eyes. Thankfully, she’d thought ahead and had put a small box of tissues at the end of every row of seats. The boxes were being passed back and forth as Nate’s ten-year-old sister, Madison, reached into her basket of rose petals and threw them over her brother and new sister-in-law as they kissed and the crowd cheered.

Rebecca was on her feet clapping along with the rest of them. The new bride and groom walked down the aisle hand in hand and she had to put her hand over her heart, as if somehow that could keep everything she was feeling—and everything she was wishing for—deep inside.

S
ean Murphy heard the applause and cheers as he walked through the inn’s front door. From the flower petals drifting out of the event room into the inn’s entry, he could easily guess it was a wedding.

It instantly struck him as strange. Why would Stu schedule another wedding at the inn on the same weekend as his own? And how exactly had his brother planned to clean up this wedding party and still have time to set up for his own rehearsal dinner that night?

But those questions left his mind as quickly as they had entered, the noise coming from the event room digging at the headache Sean had been riding out all day. Frankly, all he really cared about right now was getting upstairs to his suite to take a shower.

The red-eye from China didn’t usually take it out of him like this. But it had been a crazy three weeks of constant flights, of hotel rooms he’d barely had time to check in to before he was leaving for the next airport, the next meeting. Today, he’d hoped to have time to get back to his house in Boston to shower, to transfer clothes in his
luggage, to flip through his mail before heading to Emerald Lake for his brother’s rehearsal dinner, but his flight had been delayed. So he’d headed straight to the inn.

Sean usually made it a point to stay as far away from weddings as he possibly could, but he hadn’t been home in so long that curiosity had him dropping his bags behind the check-in counter and walking across stray rose petals toward the large room that overlooked the lake.

Standing at a side door behind a large potted plant, he instantly recognized the bride and groom. Sean had been a couple of years ahead of Andi and Nate in school. As long as he remembered, they’d always been a couple. How was it that they were only just getting married? He would have thought they’d have gotten hitched a long time ago and popped out a handful of kids by now.

A moment later, Sean’s gut inexplicably tightened at the sight of Andi and Nate kissing. Worse still, something that felt way too much like envy stole through him a beat later.

Despite his discomfort, Sean forced himself to keep his gaze on the happy couple so that he could dissect whatever it was that was putting these strange thoughts in his head.

In twenty years of dating beautiful women, he’d never wanted to get married, had never been even remotely tempted to get down on one knee and ask one woman to be his for eternity. As he watched two people he’d known as children make their vows to each other, Sean could see that Nate and Andi thought they were in love. And maybe they were.

For now, at least.

But it was what happened later—ten, fifteen, twenty
years down the road once they had kids and were supposed to be a cohesive family unit who all looked out for each other—that Sean had no faith in. In fact, the only thing he knew for certain was that the people who got hurt when love failed weren’t just the man and the woman who had once made vows to each other on their wedding day. No, the net was cast much wider than that.

Pushing the rogue emotions away, he scanned the occupants of the room. It had been a long time since he’d been back to Emerald Lake but he recognized most of them. The old football coach. The owner of the general store. Several other people he’d gone to school with.

About to move away from the doorway, sure that a hot shower and a beer would go a long way toward unknotting the tightness in his gut, his eyes caught a flash of movement that held his gaze—and his feet—in place.

Long golden-brown hair was gliding like silk across a woman’s back as she moved out from behind a tall elderly man. And then she turned her face toward him and his breath actually lodged in his throat as he looked at her. Her eyes were glittering with tears, her cheeks were flushed. She was biting her lip, and her hands were covering her heart.

And she was beautiful.

What was wrong with him? He’d never been drawn to a delicate woman like this who looked like she could sprout fairy wings and fly away. He always chose the women who shared his bed very carefully, making sure they were strong enough to never make the mistake of falling in love with him or thinking they could change him in some way.

But there was no denying his elemental reaction to this woman.

It was long past time to turn away, to go upstairs and take that shower he’d been looking forward to. Even more than that, he knew there were several documents waiting in his e-mail for his approval. He needed to leave. Right now.

But instead of doing any of those things, Sean Murphy simply stood right where he was and stared at the woman who wasn’t only taking his breath away but who was making his heart beat faster, too.

Details had made Sean millions in the years since he’d left Emerald Lake. He never got them wrong. But now, as the sun came in through one of the large windows that looked out on the frozen lake and lit her up like a spotlight, he realized her hair was neither brown nor gold. Because as she shifted slightly and the silky curtain of hair moved, he saw clear flashes of red.

More than ever, he knew he needed to get moving before she saw him standing there gaping at her like an adolescent in the throes of his first major crush. But he didn’t move, couldn’t stop himself from running his eyes over her from head to toe.

She wasn’t tall, but she wasn’t short either. Her figure wasn’t too slim or too rounded.

She was
perfect
.

Sean shook his head to try and clear the word away, but when he did, he just ended up back at
beautiful.

He was renowned for his clearheaded assessments of not only companies but people, too. Sean forced himself to study the woman’s clothes in an analytical manner so that he could put together a better, more accurate picture of her, one that had nothing to do with words like
perfect
or
beautiful
.

Her green dress was well-tailored, but not particularly flashy. The pearls at her earlobes and around her neck were elegant, but not at all intended to draw a man’s eyes. Neither were her shoes, low-heeled and silver. He got the sense she wasn’t the kind of woman who would ever try to draw attention to herself.

Even though she had every ounce of his.

The crowd was starting to file out of the room, following Andi and Nate, but the woman hung behind, bending over to pick up stray flower petals strewn around her seat.

Something jogged his brain, a prickle that was more than just a man’s awareness of a beautiful woman, a warning that he knew her from somewhere, but he couldn’t quite grab hold of it.

Finally, when the room was empty save the two of them and she was continuing to grab handfuls of flower petals off the floor, she faced him with a look of surprise on her face.

She was closer now, near enough that he could see just how delicate her features were, from her high cheekbones to her slightly pointed chin and the tiny indentations in each cheek as she smiled.

“Oh, hello.”

In her surprise at seeing him standing in the doorway, a big chunk of the rose petals fell out of her hands and fluttered to the floor. She gave him a wry smile as she bent down to try and pick them back up, cradling the pile in her hands and arms.